In his lifetime, William Gilmore Simms “was the author of thirty-four works of fiction,
nineteen volumes of poetry, three of drama, three anthologies, three volumes of
history, two of geography, six of biography, and twelve of reviews,
miscellanies and addresses, a total of eighty-two volumes.”[1] The estimate of the output was impressive, if not quite complete.[2] Regardless, Simms’s influence was unparalleled. No
mid-nineteenth-century writer and editor did more to frame white southern
self-identity and nationalism, shape southern historical consciousness, or
foster ...